June 11, 2008

I had a dream last night that I lost my mucous plug and I was bleeding. I woke up, went to the bathroom and there was nothing. Drat. I went back to bed, slept for another hour or so and went to the bathroom again. Nothing. Then I ate breakfast, went through my routine with the kids and checking email, etc. and went to the bathroom again (gotta love a pregnant bladder) and what do you know? Something! A nice bit of mucous that had to be my mucous plug and blood – red blood. I’m being descriptive again. Just you wait, after this kid is born, you’ll all be cringing at my descriptions of labour. The thing is, if it’s false labour and there is bleeding, it is usually brown. This is definitely not brown. And yes, it can mean that labour is still a day or more away, but still – this means that I should have the baby by the end of the week, rather than having to go through having my membranes stripped or being induced. I literally just prayed for this specific thing moments before I went to the bathroom and made my discovery – God is listening! So here’s hoping that today will be the day. Apparently, my child decided that coming during the first ten days of the month wasn’t going to happen, but if it’s born today, all three of my kids will have been born on Wednesdays, which I think is pretty cool. You know me, I get joy out of silly things like that.

Now the hard part is knowing when to go to the hospital. I’m not having regular contractions, but rather lots of cramps. I guess I just wait it out at this point. I called Mike and let him know something was happening, and called my mother-in-law to put her on alert for the day. So now I just hope it wasn’t in vain and I don’t have to wait until tomorrow. Oooooh, there’s a nice crampy contraction. Yikes. Let’s just hope I don’t wait too long and end up delivering on the floor in my living room (or..my bed or couch, etc.).

Other than updating this post, I think I won’t be writing again until the labour story that will come in all its gruesome glory sometime after the birth of my baby. Hooray!

Update: 4:00 pm

A whole bunch of nothing. Well, so far anyway. I feel sort of silly now for calling Mike and his mom since I haven’t had any indication that anything is going to happen today. I did some work around the house, kept the kids entertained, called my sister, made lunch and went for a walk and still not much of anything. Including more bleeding. The thing is, it seems that if I lost my mucous plug weeks before having the baby, it wouldn’t be so red, it would be brown-ish. Maybe I’m wrong, but I sincerely hope that I’m not. It’s okay if this kid doesn’t come until tomorrow or Friday…or sometime before Monday, but if it waits that long, I’m pretty sure my doctor won’t have any trouble stripping my membranes, and that was something I wasn’t looking forward to. Maybe I’ll have the baby tonight and look back on this and laugh later. I totally did this when I was pregnant with Elias, actually. On the 5th of September, I had some bleeding and then contractions in the evening. When I went in to the hospital, I wasn’t effaced or dilated at all. The next morning, I was giving up and deciding that I’d just stay pregnant until I was overdue (since that was still two and a half weeks before my due date). Elias was born before seven that night. One of the reasons I’m waiting to go into the hospital is that when I went in with him, I was six centimetres dilated and they put me on pitocin to get things moving. I was then stuck in a bed for six hours. I really really don’t want that to happen again. Sorry if I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel pretty strongly about it. So I’m waiting for something drastic to happen – my water to break or my contractions to get really bad. Half of the things I read about losing your mucous plug say that if it’s tinged with red blood, or if you have show that is red or pink (rather than brown), labour will start within twenty-four hours. Other sources have said that it could mean labour is still weeks away. At least I know that’s not right. If this kid isn’t out on its own by the 20th, it will be forced out of residence by the power of prostaglandin gel (gulp). But really, I was thinking how awesome is this that I’m just going to have the baby on my own and not have to have any of that happen again. Oh, please. I really hope that I didn’t jump the gun getting so excited about it.